All else equal I definitely like the idea to popularize some sort of longtermist sentiment. I’m still unsure about the usefulness—I have some doubts about the paths to impact proposed. Personally, I think that a world with a mass-appeal version of longtermism would be a lot more pleasant for me to live in, but not necessarily much better off on the metrics that matter.
Climate is a very democratically legitimate issue. It’s discussed all the time, lots of people are very passionate about it, and it can probably move some pretty hefty voting blocs. I think investing the amount of energy it would take to get low-key longtermism to the same level of democratic legitimacy as climate, to get the same returns from government that the climate folks are getting, would be pretty abysmal. That said, I don’t really know what the counterfactual looks like, so it’s hard to compare how worthwhile the mass attention really is.
Widening the talent pool seems most plausible, but the model here is a bit fuzzy to me. Very few people work on one of their top-three-world-issues, but EA is currently very small, so doing this would probably bring in a serious influx of people wanting to do direct work. But if this dominates the value of the proposal, is there a reason it wouldn’t be better/cheaper/faster to do more targeted outreach instead of aiming for Mass Appeal? I guess it depends on how easy vs how expensive it is to try and target the folks that really do want to work on one of their top-three-world-issues.
I think the benefit of “making longtermist causes easier to explain” is mostly subsumed by the other two arguments? I can’t think of any path-to-impact for this that doesn’t run through marginal pushes towards either government action or direct work.
Also, quick flag that the slogan “creating a better future for our grandchildren” reads a bit nationalist to me—maybe because of some unpleasant similarity to the 14 words.
Thank you for your excellent points, James! Before responding to your points in turn, I do agree that a significant part of the appeal of my proposal is to make it nicer for EAs. Whether that is worth investing in is not clear to me either—there are definitely more cost-effective ways of doing that. Now to your points:
I think I define democratic legitimacy slightly differently. Instead of viewing it as putting pressure on politicians through them knowing that everyone cares about the long term, I see it moving long-term policies within the Overton window so to speak by making it legitimate. Thus, it acts as a multiplier for EA policy work.
Wrt talent pool, I think it depends on how tractable it is to “predict” the impact of a given individual. I would guess that mass appeal works better if it is harder to a priori predict the impact of a given person / group - then it becomes more of a numbers’ game with getting as many interested people thinking about these issues. I am quite uncertain about whether this is the case, and I imagine there are many other constraints (in e.g. hiring capacity of EA orgs).
I fully agree that this is more of a “nice to have” than a huge value proposition.
I’d never heard of the 14 words but I do agree that the similarity is unfortunate. The slogan was also meant more as an illustration rather than a fully fledged proposal—luckily, it facilitates discussions like these!
All else equal I definitely like the idea to popularize some sort of longtermist sentiment. I’m still unsure about the usefulness—I have some doubts about the paths to impact proposed. Personally, I think that a world with a mass-appeal version of longtermism would be a lot more pleasant for me to live in, but not necessarily much better off on the metrics that matter.
Climate is a very democratically legitimate issue. It’s discussed all the time, lots of people are very passionate about it, and it can probably move some pretty hefty voting blocs. I think investing the amount of energy it would take to get low-key longtermism to the same level of democratic legitimacy as climate, to get the same returns from government that the climate folks are getting, would be pretty abysmal. That said, I don’t really know what the counterfactual looks like, so it’s hard to compare how worthwhile the mass attention really is.
Widening the talent pool seems most plausible, but the model here is a bit fuzzy to me. Very few people work on one of their top-three-world-issues, but EA is currently very small, so doing this would probably bring in a serious influx of people wanting to do direct work. But if this dominates the value of the proposal, is there a reason it wouldn’t be better/cheaper/faster to do more targeted outreach instead of aiming for Mass Appeal? I guess it depends on how easy vs how expensive it is to try and target the folks that really do want to work on one of their top-three-world-issues.
I think the benefit of “making longtermist causes easier to explain” is mostly subsumed by the other two arguments? I can’t think of any path-to-impact for this that doesn’t run through marginal pushes towards either government action or direct work.
Also, quick flag that the slogan “creating a better future for our grandchildren” reads a bit nationalist to me—maybe because of some unpleasant similarity to the 14 words.
Thank you for your excellent points, James! Before responding to your points in turn, I do agree that a significant part of the appeal of my proposal is to make it nicer for EAs. Whether that is worth investing in is not clear to me either—there are definitely more cost-effective ways of doing that. Now to your points:
I think I define democratic legitimacy slightly differently. Instead of viewing it as putting pressure on politicians through them knowing that everyone cares about the long term, I see it moving long-term policies within the Overton window so to speak by making it legitimate. Thus, it acts as a multiplier for EA policy work.
Wrt talent pool, I think it depends on how tractable it is to “predict” the impact of a given individual. I would guess that mass appeal works better if it is harder to a priori predict the impact of a given person / group - then it becomes more of a numbers’ game with getting as many interested people thinking about these issues. I am quite uncertain about whether this is the case, and I imagine there are many other constraints (in e.g. hiring capacity of EA orgs).
I fully agree that this is more of a “nice to have” than a huge value proposition. I’d never heard of the 14 words but I do agree that the similarity is unfortunate. The slogan was also meant more as an illustration rather than a fully fledged proposal—luckily, it facilitates discussions like these!